MY CHURCH

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High Desert United Reformed Church



We started in 2000 as a home bible study in Oak Hills . Pastor Adam Kaloostian, from the Ontario (CA) URC, taught from the book of Hebrews, then through the Gospel of John on Tuesday nights. In 2002 we started meeting on Sunday evenings at the Korean Presbyterian Church in Victorville. We had guest preachers from URC churches in Southern Calif. as well as faculty and student/alumni from Westminster Seminary, CA. Later that year, Rev. Tom Morrison was called to assume minsterial duties.

On October 12, 2002, Rev. Morrison was oficially installed as pastor of the congregation, which was still a "church plant" under the auspices of the Ontario URC. By then we were meeting in the auditorium of the Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley. On a snowy November evening in 2004, we were officially established as a "particular" church in the federation of United Reformed Churches in North America.



The Bride of Christ

"Never Has a Bride Been Sought or Won at So Great a Price"

__William MacDonald  in a lecture on "The Mystery of the Church"

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25-27)

Calvinistic Cartoons: Chews

Calvinistic Cartoons: Chews
Check out this post on Eddie Eddings' blog. If you are clever-minded, I encourage you to submit a comment. If you are too shy to type a comment, at least consider becoming a follower. It is a very funny blog.

Craig

"I used to be a Christian, but..."

The article below, by Rod Rosenbladt, concerns "...those who once professed that Christ shed his blood, freely justified them before God, forgave their sin, gave them eternal life--but now they don't believe it." The "having-given-up-on-it-all" ones.

Is the church itself to blame? Read the article, "The Gospel Is for the Broken."

Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven

The True Church, according to the Belgic Confession, can be recognized by three essential marks. 1. It practices the true preaching of the gospel; 2. It maintains the pure administration of the sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper) and 3. It exercises church discipline for correcting and punishing sins.

In the second mark, the administration of baptism and the Lord's supper serve as visible, tangible signs, appointed by God, to more fully declare the promise of the gospel. They are visible signs and seals of a spiritual reality.

The first and third marks, the preaching of the gospel and church discipline, are what we call "keys of the kingdom" by which the church is given the authority to admit to, or bar from the kingdom of heaven. Ultimately, eternal life and eternal condemnation of individuals are in the hands of God alone, but He has commissioned the church as His instrument in administering the kingdom of heaven on earth according to the Word of God.

The Heidelberg Catechism states what we believe the Bible teaches regarding how the kingdom of heaven is opened or shut by the preaching of the gospel:

Q: How is the kingdom of heaven opened and
shut by the preaching of the Holy Gospel?

A: In this way: that, according to the command of
Christ, it is proclaimed and openly witnessed to
believers, one and all, that as often as they accept
with true faith the promise of the Gospel, all their
sins are really forgiven them of God for the sake of
Christ’s merits; and on the contrary, to all
unbelievers and hypocrites, that the wrath of God
and eternal condemnation abide on them so long as
they are not converted. According to this testimony
of the Gospel, God will judge men both in this life
and in that which is to come.__Q. 84

Matt. 16:19; Mark 16:15-16; John 20:23